Faith-based politics? The World Council of Churches and the wars in Yugoslavia and Ukraine

Veselica, Milan (2024) Faith-based politics? The World Council of Churches and the wars in Yugoslavia and Ukraine. In: Religious Conflicts in the World: Causes and Possible Solutions. Faculty of Philosophy at Ss Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, pp. 109-126. ISBN 978-608-238-244-9

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Abstract

The World Council of Churches (WCC) is an international faith-based organization whose mission is to provide a forum for ecumenical dialogue. The political background of the activities of the WCC during the Cold War was well-researched in literature. However, the political behavior of the WCC after the Cold War, in the new international conditions, remained relatively unexplored. This article aims to contribute to the debate about the position of faith-based organizations in political disputes. It presents a comparative analysis of the actions of the WCC in the conditions of the Yugoslav and Ukrainian wars. Both cases represent significant international crises with a significant role of the Orthodox churches that are members of the WCC (the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church). The content analysis and discourse analysis were applied in all articles, official statements, and chronicles published in the official journal of the WCC, The Ecumenical Review, for the period of crises (1991–1999; 2014–2023). A comparative analysis of the actions of the WCC in the conditions of the Yugoslav and Ukrainian crises showed that the WCC has the ability to achieve faith-based politics, which mainly refers to maintaining a certain degree of political autonomy and the character of a forum for inter-church dialogue and not catalyzing political conflicts.

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